July 29, 2024 • 42 mins
In the past weeks I have been listening to Griffin Dunne’s interviews, watching his films, and most of all, reading his beautiful new memoir, ‘The Friday Afternoon Club,’ with stories about growing up in a family full of storytellers.
Cooking is telling a story, eating together is telling a story, going to a food market in Naples, is telling a story. When Griffin told his brother Alex he was going to write a book about their family, he responded, ‘You can say anything you want, but say it from a place of love.’
Today, Griffin and I are going to talk about food and family, food and friends, food and memories—from a place of love.
Ruthie’s Table 4 is made in partnership with Moncler.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
In the past.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
Weeks, a phrase has been said to me over and
over again, Ruthie, you are going to love Griffin Dunn.
Of course, being an independent spirit wishing to make up
my own mind, I've been listening to Griffin's interviews, watching
his films, and most of all, reading his beautiful new
memoir The Friday Afternoon Club. With stories of growing up
(00:26):
and a family full of story tellers. Cooking a recipe
is also about telling a story. Eating together is telling
a story. Going to a food market in Naples is
telling a story. When Griffin told his brother Alex he
was going to write a book about their family, he responded,
you can say anything you want, but say it.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
From a place of love.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Today, Griffin and I are going to talk about food
and family, food and friends, food and memories. So we
have a recipe for Tagaleradi, with which you chose from
all our books.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yes I did. The ingredients are one hundred grams of panchetta,
six hundred grams of veal minced, twenty five grams butter,
one red onion, one small leak, one celery heart and
two cloves of garlic, one teaspoon, thyme and sage, three
(01:23):
hundred milli liters of chicken broth, one hundred and fifty
milli liters of milk, peel of half a lemon. Finely
chop the red onion, leak, celery and garlic. Heat the
olive oil in a heavy pan over a medium heat.
Fry the panchetta for five minutes. Add the butter, onion, leak, celery, garlic,
(01:46):
and thyme, and season with salt and pepper. Fry for
fifteen minutes, stirring. Often add the veal in sage and
cook until the veal is no longer pink. Stir in
the hot froth milk and lemon peel and bring to
a boil. Simmer for one hour until most of the
(02:07):
liquid has evaporated. Set aside in a pan of boiling
salted water. Cook the tagli orini until al dente. Drain
and combine the pasta with the sauce. Serve. It's a
story in itself.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
That's a story.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
It's a story in itself.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
We have Sean, our head chef, who's here to tell
us about this wonderful pasta.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Well, actually, what we did instead of this exact recipe,
we actually substituted white wine rather than milk. Oh, I'm
shop that's okay because we do it in different ways.
But meat sauces are quite nice in the summer because
it always remind you if your summer holidays in Tuscany
or do you think how you kind of on a
hot Obviously it's not a hot day today, but if
(02:52):
it was a hot day, you might find that kind
of replenishing to have something like that.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I feel very.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Also, the things you know, when you think about American
where we grew up, you know, spaghetti and meatbolls. You
know bolinas sauce. It's kind heavy and it's kind of
the tomato and meat and meatballs. And then in the
pasta and this is very delicate. It's much more like
(03:21):
it's delicious.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So going to the beginning of the beginning, what was
the food like in your house?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Who? Your mother was Mexican?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
My mother was half Mexican. My grandmother was fully Mexican.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Was she present in your life? Your grandma very much.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
She married my grandfather, My grandfather wooed her away from
a man in Mexico City. He was a banker, a
very prominent man.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
So he went to Mexico and he.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Was in Mexico City and he was coming into No Gallas,
where my grandmother lived, and she fell in love with
my grandfather, and to make sure that the wedding would
be called off because he was on his way to
marry her. There were about twenty five to thirty stops
from Mexico City to Nogallas.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Where's no Gallas, is it No, It's.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Right on the border of Arizona and Mexico. And she
was on the Mexican side, and she was so worried
that he would show up, so she sent a telegram
to every stop from Mexico City all the way to Nogallas,
of which they were about thirty and every time there
was a stop, they go telegram for signor Gomez. Do
(04:27):
not come to the wedding. Stop. The wedding is called off.
I planned to marry Thomas Griffin and finally had a
stack of about twenty eight and then he went. He
got the hint.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
He did get them.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
He got them all, and then he turned and went
back to Mexico City a single man, and my grandmother
married Tom Griffin, who was from a very prominent family
in Chicago. They had the Griffin Wheel company, and the
Griffin wheels were on every pullman car in America. But
(05:00):
he didn't want to be in that business. He wanted
to be a rancher. And he came to Arizona as
a young boy at pulmonary problems. And he came back
and he left somebody at the altar too, a lot
of scandal in my family, and settled on a ranch
and he was sort of cut out of the will
and a lot of brought up. It was quite a
(05:21):
scandal that he left the society woman on the altar
in Chicago. So when I was growing up, food was
not really a priority my mother, except for the meal
that we had almost every day, was always cooked by
our housekeeper, a woman named Carmen, and she made free
(05:43):
poles and rice.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So she was Mexican.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
She's a Mexican. We grew up on rice and beans,
and we loved rice. We never to this day. I'm
never tired of rice and bean. If I cook for myself,
I always make rice and beans. It's just a stable
of our diet.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
But do you think your grandmother she sounds She came
from a probably privileged family as well, so maybe she
didn't go in the kitchen either.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
She did not. She was Her family were going back
generations were like real estate barons. They had silver mines.
But when the Mexican Revolution happened, Pancho Villa, they were
on the wrong side of the revolution. They were aristocrats,
and that's how they ended up in Nogallas on the
Arizona side. He drove them out and took all their holdings.
(06:27):
But then my grandmother's side of the family they built
up their real estate business and ended up owning a
lot of property at Nogallas.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
When I did an interview with Alfonso Korn, you know Alfonso,
he was saying that the Mexican the class structure was
that when you had more wealth. So in America, if
you have more wealth, you have bigger houses, bigger cars,
more cars, bigger refrigerators, bigger everything. And he said in Mexico,
with greater wealth, you didn't have bigger everything, but you
(06:55):
had more domestic staff.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Yes, my mother liked the comfort of how she grew up.
You know, in those days when you hired someone to
cook and look after your children, they stayed in your lives. Yeah,
she was such an old Carmen who cooked for us.
She was so old by the time she finally retired.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Did you feel quite connected to home?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Oh? Yeah, it was just so comforting, you know. And
she was the one who would spank us. She was
the one who would, you know, discipline us.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
And she had children of her own she did not, and.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
She would always go whenever we were exacerbating her patients,
she go, I kim ochocho it, Oh, you horrible little boy,
and you know you're driving me crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Is so your grandmother spoke Spanish? Obviously, did your mother?
Speaker 1 (07:41):
My mother spoke Spanish well. To my regret, I had
a bucket list. One was to write a book. I
did that, and the other was to finally master Spanish.
And recently I have a problem being in California, Mexican
Spanish was the language of domestics, and I think my
father was a bit of a snob at that period
(08:03):
in his life before he evolved, so we weren't really
encouraged to speak Spanish. And in fact, when I started
school from the first grade, you know, they had us
take French. Yeah, and here I had, you know, so
I spoke of pigeon Spanish that I learned from Carmen
and what else.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Going back to the food, do you ever sit.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Down for a fact, No, No, We would have meals
always in restaurants when we ever we ate together. We
never sat at a table in our home. And we
would go to a place on Sunday nights. There were
three restaurants. One was called the Bistro, the other was
called Chasins, and the other was the Brown Derby. And
our favorite was Chasins. And we'd have to get dressed up,
(08:45):
and it was every Sunday night and we'd be there
and you'd see Alfred Hitchcock at one table and mister
and missus Jimmy Stewart at another, and it was a
very you.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Know, people move around.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, it was very social, you know, but everybody had
their own sort of table. My brother and sister and
I loved Chasins because they made a dish called a
butterfly steak.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I can imagine it's opened up.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
They open it up and it's just covered in butter,
and it was so delicious. And we would always go
on about the butterfly steak.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Do you think they put the butter on so you
get it? And then there would be a lump of
butter on it that would melt.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Over there and you'd see the lump and then you'd
see it spread and it would just and you could cut.
You could rest the knife on top of the steak,
not even apply pressure, that would just sort of cut.
And there was a bathroom at Chasin's, the men's room,
and I think one of my earliest I guess sort
of not to overshare, but earliest erotic memories of this
(09:40):
place was there was in the bathroom at the urinal
was a picture of a man drowning in bosoms. He
was a tiny figure and then it was just surrounded
by bosoms.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
And I bet that picture isn't there anymore?
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Is no In fact, you know, the business Chasins went
out of business and they had an aux and I
found out too late, but I wanted to know what
happened to the bosom picture. I wanted to have that bosom.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Picture to where it is.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
I don't know who happened.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Maybe it's gone to the Metropolitan Museum.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, I don't know if it's worthy of that.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Of times in a change.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So you go to Chase and said where the other
did you go to other restaurants? So did you wasn't
just I mean other restaurant meals, or were it you
in school Monday to Friday and then Sunday night, you
want to.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Monday Monday through Friday, we would sit at the table
and be served just my brother, sister and I the
the rice and beans, and you know, we had another
unusual thing, and we had a pantry in our house.
Just to show you how irreverent we were about food.
We had stacks and stacks of spam and a can
(10:48):
and when we would I would go for lunch. They
would make to school. In our lunch bags were spam sandwiches.
Now they're disgusting spam, but it's I happen to love
that taste. It probably tastes like dog food, if you
like dog food.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
When they entertained, would you be sort of like sitting
on the stairs watching these sparkling.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Got it exactly, And you know, then there would be
the moment at the beginning of the party before the
adults really got hammered, and yeah, it got kind of wild.
You know, we'd be called down and we'd you know,
my brother and I would have matching bathrobes, and my
sister wore like one of those little caps you see
(11:32):
in like dickens a nightgown, and we'd say good night,
and my brother and I would bow, and my sister
would curtsey, and the adults would go ooh and on.
It was a little spectacle that was terribly embarrassing to us.
You know. Years later, Dennis Hopper used to come to
our house. This is well before Easy Writer. And years
later I'm doing a movie with Dennis and it's after
(11:54):
work and we're smoking a joint and he kind of
looks off and he goes, I'm just thinking about you
kids coming down and bowing and curtsying to us all.
I think that was the saddest thing I ever saw
in my whole life. And it was weird, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
But where do you think that came from?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Because I was just thinking, your mother grew up on
a bratt and your father had left all that, so
I wondered where that. It's not as if they came
from European run No.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
But my father at this point in his life was
very materialistic and very much of a sort of the
production designer of his life, with the right material things
for the house. And I think he fashioned us on
the photographs of the royal family of Cecil Beaton. I
(12:48):
mean he would say as much. And he was a
fantastic photographer. He had a hustle blot and every summer
we would pose for these deadly serious Christmas card picks,
these three glum looking children in suits and with this
sort of pastoral background and the art design in our
(13:09):
backyard and send them out as Christmas cards to families
in New York, London, Los Angeles. And they were beautiful.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Did you ever go to other kids' houses and see
family like fridges and people sitting around?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, parents and totally different, totally different kind of things
in about half, But other parents were equally sort of superficial,
you know, and their priority, particularly in that generation, their
main focus was themselves, you know. They were not like
the kind of parent I became in most every parent
(13:47):
I know where you just encourage every little thing they do,
and you notice and you want to know where they
go and where you know, And.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, I think that. Do you have grandchildren yet? No,
that's really nice.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
I do.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And I always say is that the really great thing
about having grandchildren is the children, but also just seeing
your kids as parents And I just look at them
and I think they are. You know, I thought we
were pretty good, but they are amazing.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
One of the happiest things I was able to do
for my parents was give them a child. They loved
being grandparents.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
So maybe that skipped generate. They were better grandparents and
parents so much better.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
It was so much easier. You have less responsibility. And
my father would just spoil my daughter, Hannah Rotten, and
she goes, listen kid. My dad always had a funny,
dark sense of humor. He goes, listen kid, when I cool,
I'm going to leave you so much money, which is
a terrible thing to tell a little kid, by the way,
And my mother was my mother had ms, multiple scrosses,
(14:52):
and so she was unable to you know, she was
in bed confined and could be moved to a wheelchair.
But the look on her face when I brought my
daughter and I put her on the bed and my
daughter was, you know, an infant, but she recognized that
this lady sitting up in bed was someone important and
(15:16):
she which she'd never done with anyone. She just crawled
to her.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
And did your parents they didn't like to cook or
have a domestic life of food? Did they love food?
Did you was your mother very did? She looks so
elegant in these I just think they like to drink, right,
they like to drink.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Did they like to eat?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I don't think so. My father was you know, Irish Catholic,
and I think they ate the staple of you know whatever.
Again more the Irish cook would make they called cook
what is cook serving? And it was all like comfort food.
I know my dad loved meat loaf, you go on
in chicken pot pie. In fact, when when I was
(16:01):
married to Hannah's mom and at our wedding, Dad said,
I'm paying for the whole thing. I'm going to take
care of this. He was very you know, proud and excited,
and he told the wedding planner that he hired he
wanted chicken pot pie. And the wedding planner already had
a chicken dish prepared, and he shows the menu of
what's going to be served, and he goes, where's my
(16:22):
chicken pot pie? He went, well, it just seemed redundant
because we have chicken pie art and he went, I said,
I want a chicken fucking pot pie. That's how much
you love that?
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, that's what do you want?
Speaker 3 (16:33):
We want yeah, yeah, but you had Did you get
to boarding school?
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I did?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, so was that a Wrencher going away?
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And it was his school very much based on on
English boarding schools, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Have no heat, bad food, and.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Bullying, terrible cruelty. There was corporal punishment.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Sorry for the British people here, but that is kind
of the ethos of yeah, I think it's better now maybe.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
But that it does not. But I mean we were
literally flogged. There was a it was called where was it?
It was in Massachusetts, a little a town called Southborough,
mass called Fay, which wasn't a lot of fun to
go back to LA and come home from Fay. You know,
there were children as young as seven years old. I
was eleven, and it was a novelty to be a
(17:18):
kid from LA to be going to school in Massachusetts,
you know, at such a young age as well. But
you know this, the food at that school was slop.
You know, We're all dressed in coats and ties for
dinner and we couldn't eat. There was a ceremony before
we could eat, of some kind of homily would be said,
and then we'd just eat and it just stuff ourselves.
(17:43):
Just everybody ate like it was like being at a trough.
And if you put your elbow on the table, the
headmaster at an enormous silver spoon. It must have weighed
about five pounds or something. And if you saw a kid,
you know, with his elbow on the table, he'd throw
the spoon, throw it, and at one time hit a
kid in the mouth and knocked his tooth out.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
The River Cafe, cafe, steps away from our restaurant, is
now open. In the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti,
chiambella and cristata from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon,
ice creamed coops and River Cafe classic desserts. Come in
the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
No need to book, see you here.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
So let's go back.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
So you left home all domestic sort of domestic life
at home and school?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Did you did you go to college?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Did you go straight into film?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So I was a bit of a discipline problem. I
was kicked out, kicked out. I was kicked out of
tenth grade, and then I became an actor both uh
and moved to New York. But in tenth grade, no,
I spent a year in Los Angeles, before going. But
and I was held back a year also because I
(19:10):
was dyslexic, poor student.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yeah, my husband's yeah, can you do you spell?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
You can't spell?
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Or I have a terrible time with math. But I
became a voracious reader once I was out of school.
Once I wasn't.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
And also probably when you were in school. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
My husband's much older than you that he was in school,
probably in the forties or whatever, and they didn't know
what dyslexia was, so he was beaten because he couldn't
memorize it. They just say, you have to learn this poem,
and if you can't, then he was.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Also I know just what he went through. I was
treated as you know, stupid, lazy, Yeah, mostly stupid and
and sort of mentally handicapped, and he had to be
I had to be held back a grade, and you know,
I get pitying looks or just be called stupid. But
you know, before then we did. I had one more
(20:05):
you mentioned Europe. One of my mothers before she became
you know, unable to walk, and she was quite healthy.
When I was thirteen, my brother was eleven and my
sister was eight, she took us to Italy, it was
her dream and she wanted to show us. We went
(20:28):
to Italy and England and France, and we took the Michelangelo,
the ocean Liner, and there began our journey. And there
I realized, oh, my mother really does love food. And
she would take us to these restaurants and go, oh
my god, this is so good, that's so good. You know,
I was, you know, a bit of a you know,
(20:49):
mischievous kid, and I would always kind of sneak out.
And when we were in Venice, I snuck out and
I when everybody was asleep, I assumed, and I met
these girls and I told him I was thirteen, yeah,
and I told him I was much older. And we
kind of walked through the streets and the canals and
(21:09):
I rescued them from some harassing Italian guys. And we're
walking through and I think I told him I'm traveling
on my own. I'm like much older. And all of
a sudden, we're in the one of the canals were in.
A boat passes by, it's a police boat and I
hear find Nay Pein and the girls go, isn't that
(21:33):
your name? I went, yeah, your day.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I thought you was ting to some Italian.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
No, no, it was my name, and my mother woke
up so he wasn't there, and she called the police
the Venetian place, and I got totally busted and I
had to get on the We all got in the
thing and there's my mother at the dock practically with
a rolling pin in her hand, and went, oh, so
you're traveling with your mother. I went, yeah. You know.
(22:00):
Another memory I have of that place is she was
dying to show us the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel
and the Michelangelo. And so we're in line. This is
in the sixties, and she's wearing a mini skirt as
most women wore, and we're in line to get the
(22:21):
tickets and one of the guys, I forget what they're called,
but the guards with the hats and the little swords
there they one of them came over and shamed my
mother about what she was wearing and talked to her.
Even though I didn't speak Italian. He talked to her
like she was some you know, prostitute or something. I mean,
my mother was mortified. So we went back to the hotel.
(22:44):
She changed and her attitude by the time we went
to the Vatican her attitude about being a Catholic and
being you know, proud of showing us this had totally changed.
We would see the displays of all the gold and
the crown and she would just say, this was all
(23:06):
stolen from poor people gave donations to buy this ridiculous extravagance,
and I think a part of her, you know, lost
her faith.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So her father and Mexican mother were Catholic. She was
raised as a Catholic, so she did have I mean
to tell she did wanting to expose her children to
Europe and choose the restaurants and give you to.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
The party going.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
I mean there was the bar that was very different
than my father. You think that was oh yeah, she
was not. You know, my father was the ringleader of
gathering of who's coming to the parties and where we're
going to go, and the emphasis on celebrity, and my
mother wasn't really like that. She went along with it,
but when they divorced, that was one of the main reasons.
(23:57):
She just didn't want to be the hostess social light,
you know anymore. And you know, when they divorced, my
father had to do some real soul searching, and he
loved my mother, and he called her his wife right
all the way through decades after the divorce, and all
of his priorities changed, you know, and he went he
(24:17):
lost all of his money, He couldn't get a job
anymore in the movie business that he loved, and he'd
burned every bridge, you know, from drinking. And he drove
up the coast in a little Ford automobile, used to
have a Mercedes that he treasured. His car broke down
in a little town in Oregon and he lived in
(24:38):
a cabin in Oregon for a year, got sober and
wrote these long, single space typed letters to his children.
And they were like workshops for him to find his voice.
And that's really the you know, the groundwork for how
he became a writer and shed all of that superficiality
(25:00):
and you know, his priorities completely changed and he really
found himself. He found his voice and what his purpose
was in great and became a great writer.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
If you liked listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
please make sure to rape and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Did you ever enjoy food? Was there ever a time
when you were eating something and you thought this is delicious.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I want to tell you the exact time I embraced food,
because now I'll tell you exactly when in nineteen eighty
I did. I was in a movie that was shooting
in Poland.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
What was it.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
It was called The Wall, based on John Hershey's book
about the Warsaw Ghetto, and I played a young ghetto fighter.
Rosanna Arquette was in this movie. Tom Conti was in
this movie who became a lifelong friend, Diane West. And
we were there during the Olympics in Moscow, and that
(26:16):
was the year that United States boycott it because of
their involvement Russia's involvement in Afghanistan nineteen eighty and so
all the food that would have been anything that mood
or bleat was sent to Moscow to feed the people
at the Olympics. So we were practically starving to death.
(26:38):
And I mean literally. Rosanna Arquette and Diane Weist I
passed them on my way to the set. When they
weren't working. They would wear babushkas without any irony involved.
They looked like peasants and be waiting in line for
a black market because we heard bananas were being sold
there and the importance of food. So each we would
(27:02):
gather enough food from the black market in order to
make a meal in one of our little tinker dressing
room cavern that had an oven and stuff, and Tom
County would make this incredible meal of all found things
that we anybody on their day off, they had to
come up with something, so we'd find bread, we'd find this,
and these were the best meals I ever had. So
(27:24):
when that's when I realized food actually tastes good, I
didn't realize it tasted good. I was twenty three, twenty
two something like that. So when we it came time
to leave the country, also went into martial law. Like
Valensa was the strikes were happening. It was a very
(27:47):
intense time to be there, and we were held for
over two months because of the conditions.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
We couldn't get out.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
We could not get out.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Was this an American production?
Speaker 1 (27:56):
It was an American production, and so we finally got out.
We're on the lot Airlines and it's changed. We're changing
planes in Frankfurt and we all have are going to
different destinations. We have to walk to wherever our destinations are,
But in the along the way to our gate, we're
all these different food places, and all of us just went,
(28:18):
oh my god, they have pezz overy. Oh my god,
there's oh we have and we all missed our flights.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
You missed it.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Every one of us missed our flights. We just ate
and ate, and ever since then, I understood food, and
I understood pasta in particular, and did so.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
When you went to New York age twenty three, and
you know, did you have your own apartment?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Did you just eat out?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
So I got my first apartment and we went to
the neighborhood places. It was on twentieth, just West twentieth Street.
It was in an area that at that time it's
the Flattering district. Now it's terribly trending. But it was
all warehouses and that made you know, a cardboard box,
and there was they were always manufacturing things. At night.
(29:04):
It was very noisy. You'd hear these machines and stuff,
and it was a desolate street. But for some reason,
I made my own clam chowder. Oh that's and I
had like a croc pot and I would make clam
chowder that would last for I have to say, I'm amazed.
As I'm telling you this, I can believe this. You're
(29:25):
bringing up all these sensory food memories. But yes, that
would be like my dish.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
That's ambitious. You were acting.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
At the time I was acting acting.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Money was money in Isshoot.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Money was always an issue.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
But you didn't work. And another you never have you
ever worked in a restaurant?
Speaker 1 (29:41):
I have. My first job was at a restaurant called
Joe Allen's, of course, you know, very famous theater place.
And I met Joe and had my interview with Joe.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
And he came to the River Cafe in the early days.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
I bet he did when he died about two three
years ago, but he was well into his nineties then too.
And so I had my meeting with Joe, and I
think I mentioned something about what I could lie without
my pulse raising. I told her I had all this
experience and uh and uh. He saw me waiting on
(30:17):
a table and somebody asked, can I have some oil
and vinegar for my dressing? And I took the bowl,
I took the salad from their plate and put the
oil and vinegar on in the kitchen, and Joe went,
You've never waited a day in your life. You bring
out the oil and victory. You don't put it on
for them that I thought, so he fired me very quickly,
(30:41):
but I stayed. I did. In fact, when I became
an actor, I would go to Joe Allen's all the
time and I had a charge account there and we
became very very friendly.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
That was.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
From my lying and faking it. I worked at a place,
mostly at a place called Beefsteak Charlie's.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Oh Yeah, where's that?
Speaker 1 (31:01):
It was a chain. I worked to the one on
the Upper West Side and it had all you could
drink sang gria and a salad bar. Salad bars were
all the new rage then, and it was pretty easy
to wait on people, but they would because there was
endless sang gria. You'd be waiting on total drunks by
the end of the night and they would try to
(31:23):
run out without tipping you, and I'd have to chase
them down the street run.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
You know, that's very Do you think you learned anything
from working in a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, I certainly learned people skills, and you know, I
kind of learned to fake it till you make it
kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
So living in New York working in the restaurant. Was
there a time then you realize you could be full
time as an actor and not have to supplant here. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
That was my ambition where I felt I'd made it
was to be able to support myself as an actor
and most importantly take cabs after two in the morning, Yeah,
instead of being in subways. And then I could take
a cab whenever I wanted. That was a bar.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Did you live a different life of going to good
restaurants and drinking good wine and drink Was that one
of your priorities or did you?
Speaker 1 (32:12):
No? No, No, I get the taxi thing.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I really do, because I remember, you know, at even
actually quite in an early age, I would skip out
other things and take a taxi.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
I still do. Yeah. And then and then.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Your your your next you know, bar is a little
higher to be able to take a woman out to
a nice restaurant and let her order whatever she wants
and not have to worry about, you know, if she's
going to order it too much. And you know, your
stakes just sort of get higher and higher as you
as you go. But then I'm fortunate enough to be
able to go to you know, my favorite restaurants and
(32:49):
eat and stay in lovely hotels. And you know, there
was a restaurant in Los Angeles that the owner just
died recently, Dsolvano, that had really great food. And I
knew Silvano, and he was a bit of a hustler.
But I ate there on a regular basis. I love
the food and I love the wine. And I always trusted,
(33:12):
you know, whenever I said, tell me what kind of
wine to get, and they were just a great staff.
I ate there quite a bit.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
When you work, when you're doing a movie, when you're
acting or you're directing, Directors very often don't like to
stop for lunch. What do you feel about food?
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And I cannot eat lunch if I'm working, whether I'm
acting or directing, I have a food hangover. I get
really tired, in lethargic. So I will either skip or graze,
you know, lunch, just to keep my energy up. I
think it's something to do with my metabolism, you know,
even after a big meal of dinners, you know, which
(33:52):
will invariably be a big meal of dinner, especially if
I skip lunch, I will just I could eat endlessly, endlessly,
the hungary er I am. The more I eat, the
better it tastes.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
But work you wise, you don't, but you have to,
don't they do? They do make you stop at lunchtime. Yes,
West was saying that he would. He really mess and
just doesn't like to stop for lunch. But he tried
giving everyone soup. And then the crew said, you know
a way, you know, we love to eat.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
I learned that lesson the hard way. I had the
first movie I re produced, I was twenty three years old.
It was called Chili Scenes of Winter. It's based on
a novel by and Beaty. It was directed by Joan
mckensilver and I had yet to really work as an actor,
but I was able to produce a movie for United
Artists a big studio and Joan Licko and Silver directed it.
(34:42):
And my two partners, all three of us were struggling actors,
but managed to get a movie made. We optioned this
book directly from the author, and we were, you know,
had kind of really no idea what we were doing.
We knew we had to save money of a certain
budget and stay within a budge, so we got the cheapest.
We're in Salt Lake City before we came to the
(35:05):
sound stages in Culver City. We got the cheapest catering
company we could find, and the food was terrible. Now
at that time, I had no relationship to food, you know,
And on the third day the crew threatened to walk
off the picture, and I realized I made a terrible mistake,
(35:28):
well three of us did, and that how important food is,
and that it shows their value, how much you value them,
and how much you value their work. And they're each
individual talents that they bring to a production by how much,
how well you feed them, how good the food is.
And you know, having been on many movies set since,
(35:50):
when a great meal is served in the catering company,
it affects the entire mood of every single person in production.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
The trajectory of food and happiness or lonely or neglect
or involvement from your family also is to do with grief.
And you know, my son died when he was twenty six,
and I remember that when we were upstairs. I just
come home and my husband we all gathered and I
turned to one of my sons and I said, put
tomato sauce on, because I need to smell food cooking.
(36:22):
I need to smell something about nurture and our home
and when everything was destroyed, and I know you had
the tragedy of your sister, and you know you say
in your book that people bought food. Do you have
any sense of what that was like? Did your mother
stop eating or did you.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Well have food? You know, at the end, there was
that time that it was very common, you know, with
people during the periods of grief. She was on life
support for five days, and then the weeks after, lovely
friends and family would always come up with a dish
(37:00):
and all different kinds, and and there was this there's
this one woman who brought a meat loaf and and
we just love this meat love, We just it was
so comforting. And everyone thought that the woman was a
friend of the other. I thought she was a friend
(37:22):
of my mother's and dad thought she was a friend
of us. And and finally, after like the fourth day
of this meat loaf, we just went, who is she?
She friend of yours? And then we realized none of
us knew who the hell she was, and she was
taking she was answering the phone. She was we still
don't know, And my mom just went, doesn't matter. She
(37:46):
makes a hell of a meat loaf. And so I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
And you never found out.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
We never really found out. I'm sure it was a
friend of someone that knew something, but she was so
kind and it was so comforting, you know. And then
you know, a year later there was a there was
a trial for she was murdered, and there was a
trial for her killer that we attended. And the custom
(38:12):
then was to eat on TV trays, watching the events
that we had just lived through on that day in
the courtroom, play out on the evening news, and we
would just my mother would be in bed with Trey
in her lap, you know, my father would be sitting
in her wheelchair with a TV tray and eating, and
(38:36):
we would just silently watch television, and then after that,
you know, put on a movie. We were raised on movies,
and then we'd end up just watching Oh, What's on.
It was a cable, early cable called the Z Channel,
and they showed movies without interruption, and oh what's on? Z?
What's on? And then we'd watch Harold and Maud or
(38:59):
you know some they would just cheer us enormously.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
I would like to talk about your book. When you're writing,
do you eat and what is your writing routine.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
My writing routine was compulsive, you know, being a first book,
I just could not stop. I couldn't keep away from
my office. And if I was on a movie set shooting,
I would run back to my dressing room between sentences,
you know, finish up where I left off, which is
why I didn't eat very much. I was actually I smoked.
(39:31):
I smoked, and I paste, and I made coffee after
coffee after coffee, and you know, I lived in a
very unhealthy you know, physically, I didn't take good care
of myself in terms of you know, eating nutritionally. I
was sort of wired. And you know I felt the
presence of my family so much when I was doing it.
It's like having company, you know. And I just saw
(39:55):
sort of the less I ate and the more coffee
I had, the memories became more and more vivid in
place and objects and time and conversation. So so that's
how we could like write as if it was a novel,
you know, of what people said and how they you know,
(40:16):
how they talked, and each voice was completely different, you know,
different My mother talked than my father and my childhood friends,
and so it was, you know, right while I wrote
about you know, very sad periods in our family's life.
There were also really hilarious things that also happened, and
(40:37):
so you know, our family was always the worst things
got the harder. We'd laugh, you know, not almost in
reaction to it, you know, And that was I think,
you know, I attribute that to my mother's sense of
humor on her on her Mexican side, and my father's
dark sense of humor on his Irish Catholic side. It
(41:01):
really saved us, you know, our humor. But eating, I
think I would, I think I would. When it was
time to finally go to bed, I'd always leave something
I wanted to look forward to. Continuing. I then go
in the fridge and I'd take out one of those
frozen burritos and I'd defrost it and I'd pour salce
(41:25):
on it, and I'd eat it and wake up a
little fatter in the morning.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Actually, Fishers said to be asking what's in his fridge?
He did actually say that to me.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
But I think that I would ask everyone listening to
this to go to wherever you buy your books and
read the Friday Afternoon Club. It is something that has
been one of the most beautiful experiences for me to
read it and to talk to you. And before we stop,
I ask everyone one question, which is fecif food is interesting,
if it's exciting, if it's something you want to explore
(41:58):
or take an adventure with. It's also comfort. And so
your book is a lot about comfort and what we need.
And I was wondering that in times of comfort, Griffin done,
what food would you go to if you need comfort?
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Well, certainly rice and beans.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Okay, let's end on that.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
That's I mean, I never get a cigarette.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Everyone, I have to say that it is. Usually the
answer is something from the childhood. Have peanut butter and
jelly sandwich you had with your mother or beans, rice
and beans.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Let's go have some. Thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
In the past.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
Weeks, a phrase has been said to me over and
over again, Ruthie, you are going to love Griffin Dunn.
Of course, being an independent spirit wishing to make up
my own mind, I've been listening to Griffin's interviews, watching
his films, and most of all, reading his beautiful new
memoir The Friday Afternoon Club. With stories of growing up
(00:26):
and a family full of story tellers. Cooking a recipe
is also about telling a story. Eating together is telling
a story. Going to a food market in Naples is
telling a story. When Griffin told his brother Alex he
was going to write a book about their family, he responded,
you can say anything you want, but say it.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
From a place of love.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Today, Griffin and I are going to talk about food
and family, food and friends, food and memories. So we
have a recipe for Tagaleradi, with which you chose from
all our books.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yes I did. The ingredients are one hundred grams of panchetta,
six hundred grams of veal minced, twenty five grams butter,
one red onion, one small leak, one celery heart and
two cloves of garlic, one teaspoon, thyme and sage, three
(01:23):
hundred milli liters of chicken broth, one hundred and fifty
milli liters of milk, peel of half a lemon. Finely
chop the red onion, leak, celery and garlic. Heat the
olive oil in a heavy pan over a medium heat.
Fry the panchetta for five minutes. Add the butter, onion, leak, celery, garlic,
(01:46):
and thyme, and season with salt and pepper. Fry for
fifteen minutes, stirring. Often add the veal in sage and
cook until the veal is no longer pink. Stir in
the hot froth milk and lemon peel and bring to
a boil. Simmer for one hour until most of the
(02:07):
liquid has evaporated. Set aside in a pan of boiling
salted water. Cook the tagli orini until al dente. Drain
and combine the pasta with the sauce. Serve. It's a
story in itself.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
That's a story.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
It's a story in itself.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
We have Sean, our head chef, who's here to tell
us about this wonderful pasta.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Well, actually, what we did instead of this exact recipe,
we actually substituted white wine rather than milk. Oh, I'm
shop that's okay because we do it in different ways.
But meat sauces are quite nice in the summer because
it always remind you if your summer holidays in Tuscany
or do you think how you kind of on a
hot Obviously it's not a hot day today, but if
(02:52):
it was a hot day, you might find that kind
of replenishing to have something like that.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I feel very.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Also, the things you know, when you think about American
where we grew up, you know, spaghetti and meatbolls. You
know bolinas sauce. It's kind heavy and it's kind of
the tomato and meat and meatballs. And then in the
pasta and this is very delicate. It's much more like
(03:21):
it's delicious.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So going to the beginning of the beginning, what was
the food like in your house?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Who? Your mother was Mexican?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
My mother was half Mexican. My grandmother was fully Mexican.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Was she present in your life? Your grandma very much.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
She married my grandfather, My grandfather wooed her away from
a man in Mexico City. He was a banker, a
very prominent man.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
So he went to Mexico and he.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Was in Mexico City and he was coming into No Gallas,
where my grandmother lived, and she fell in love with
my grandfather, and to make sure that the wedding would
be called off because he was on his way to
marry her. There were about twenty five to thirty stops
from Mexico City to Nogallas.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Where's no Gallas, is it No, It's.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Right on the border of Arizona and Mexico. And she
was on the Mexican side, and she was so worried
that he would show up, so she sent a telegram
to every stop from Mexico City all the way to Nogallas,
of which they were about thirty and every time there
was a stop, they go telegram for signor Gomez. Do
(04:27):
not come to the wedding. Stop. The wedding is called off.
I planned to marry Thomas Griffin and finally had a
stack of about twenty eight and then he went. He
got the hint.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
He did get them.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
He got them all, and then he turned and went
back to Mexico City a single man, and my grandmother
married Tom Griffin, who was from a very prominent family
in Chicago. They had the Griffin Wheel company, and the
Griffin wheels were on every pullman car in America. But
(05:00):
he didn't want to be in that business. He wanted
to be a rancher. And he came to Arizona as
a young boy at pulmonary problems. And he came back
and he left somebody at the altar too, a lot
of scandal in my family, and settled on a ranch
and he was sort of cut out of the will
and a lot of brought up. It was quite a
(05:21):
scandal that he left the society woman on the altar
in Chicago. So when I was growing up, food was
not really a priority my mother, except for the meal
that we had almost every day, was always cooked by
our housekeeper, a woman named Carmen, and she made free
(05:43):
poles and rice.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
So she was Mexican.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
She's a Mexican. We grew up on rice and beans,
and we loved rice. We never to this day. I'm
never tired of rice and bean. If I cook for myself,
I always make rice and beans. It's just a stable
of our diet.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
But do you think your grandmother she sounds She came
from a probably privileged family as well, so maybe she
didn't go in the kitchen either.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
She did not. She was Her family were going back
generations were like real estate barons. They had silver mines.
But when the Mexican Revolution happened, Pancho Villa, they were
on the wrong side of the revolution. They were aristocrats,
and that's how they ended up in Nogallas on the
Arizona side. He drove them out and took all their holdings.
(06:27):
But then my grandmother's side of the family they built
up their real estate business and ended up owning a
lot of property at Nogallas.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
When I did an interview with Alfonso Korn, you know Alfonso,
he was saying that the Mexican the class structure was
that when you had more wealth. So in America, if
you have more wealth, you have bigger houses, bigger cars,
more cars, bigger refrigerators, bigger everything. And he said in Mexico,
with greater wealth, you didn't have bigger everything, but you
(06:55):
had more domestic staff.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Yes, my mother liked the comfort of how she grew up.
You know, in those days when you hired someone to
cook and look after your children, they stayed in your lives. Yeah,
she was such an old Carmen who cooked for us.
She was so old by the time she finally retired.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Did you feel quite connected to home?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Oh? Yeah, it was just so comforting, you know. And
she was the one who would spank us. She was
the one who would, you know, discipline us.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
And she had children of her own she did not, and.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
She would always go whenever we were exacerbating her patients,
she go, I kim ochocho it, Oh, you horrible little boy,
and you know you're driving me crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Is so your grandmother spoke Spanish? Obviously, did your mother?
Speaker 1 (07:41):
My mother spoke Spanish well. To my regret, I had
a bucket list. One was to write a book. I
did that, and the other was to finally master Spanish.
And recently I have a problem being in California, Mexican
Spanish was the language of domestics, and I think my
father was a bit of a snob at that period
(08:03):
in his life before he evolved, so we weren't really
encouraged to speak Spanish. And in fact, when I started
school from the first grade, you know, they had us
take French. Yeah, and here I had, you know, so
I spoke of pigeon Spanish that I learned from Carmen
and what else.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Going back to the food, do you ever sit.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Down for a fact, No, No, We would have meals
always in restaurants when we ever we ate together. We
never sat at a table in our home. And we
would go to a place on Sunday nights. There were
three restaurants. One was called the Bistro, the other was
called Chasins, and the other was the Brown Derby. And
our favorite was Chasins. And we'd have to get dressed up,
(08:45):
and it was every Sunday night and we'd be there
and you'd see Alfred Hitchcock at one table and mister
and missus Jimmy Stewart at another, and it was a
very you.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Know, people move around.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, it was very social, you know, but everybody had
their own sort of table. My brother and sister and
I loved Chasins because they made a dish called a
butterfly steak.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I can imagine it's opened up.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
They open it up and it's just covered in butter,
and it was so delicious. And we would always go
on about the butterfly steak.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Do you think they put the butter on so you
get it? And then there would be a lump of
butter on it that would melt.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Over there and you'd see the lump and then you'd
see it spread and it would just and you could cut.
You could rest the knife on top of the steak,
not even apply pressure, that would just sort of cut.
And there was a bathroom at Chasin's, the men's room,
and I think one of my earliest I guess sort
of not to overshare, but earliest erotic memories of this
(09:40):
place was there was in the bathroom at the urinal
was a picture of a man drowning in bosoms. He
was a tiny figure and then it was just surrounded
by bosoms.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
And I bet that picture isn't there anymore?
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Is no In fact, you know, the business Chasins went
out of business and they had an aux and I
found out too late, but I wanted to know what
happened to the bosom picture. I wanted to have that bosom.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Picture to where it is.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
I don't know who happened.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Maybe it's gone to the Metropolitan Museum.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, I don't know if it's worthy of that.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Of times in a change.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So you go to Chase and said where the other
did you go to other restaurants? So did you wasn't
just I mean other restaurant meals, or were it you
in school Monday to Friday and then Sunday night, you
want to.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Monday Monday through Friday, we would sit at the table
and be served just my brother, sister and I the
the rice and beans, and you know, we had another
unusual thing, and we had a pantry in our house.
Just to show you how irreverent we were about food.
We had stacks and stacks of spam and a can
(10:48):
and when we would I would go for lunch. They
would make to school. In our lunch bags were spam sandwiches.
Now they're disgusting spam, but it's I happen to love
that taste. It probably tastes like dog food, if you
like dog food.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
When they entertained, would you be sort of like sitting
on the stairs watching these sparkling.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Got it exactly, And you know, then there would be
the moment at the beginning of the party before the
adults really got hammered, and yeah, it got kind of wild.
You know, we'd be called down and we'd you know,
my brother and I would have matching bathrobes, and my
sister wore like one of those little caps you see
(11:32):
in like dickens a nightgown, and we'd say good night,
and my brother and I would bow, and my sister
would curtsey, and the adults would go ooh and on.
It was a little spectacle that was terribly embarrassing to us.
You know. Years later, Dennis Hopper used to come to
our house. This is well before Easy Writer. And years
later I'm doing a movie with Dennis and it's after
(11:54):
work and we're smoking a joint and he kind of
looks off and he goes, I'm just thinking about you
kids coming down and bowing and curtsying to us all.
I think that was the saddest thing I ever saw
in my whole life. And it was weird, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
But where do you think that came from?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Because I was just thinking, your mother grew up on
a bratt and your father had left all that, so
I wondered where that. It's not as if they came
from European run No.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
But my father at this point in his life was
very materialistic and very much of a sort of the
production designer of his life, with the right material things
for the house. And I think he fashioned us on
the photographs of the royal family of Cecil Beaton. I
(12:48):
mean he would say as much. And he was a
fantastic photographer. He had a hustle blot and every summer
we would pose for these deadly serious Christmas card picks,
these three glum looking children in suits and with this
sort of pastoral background and the art design in our
(13:09):
backyard and send them out as Christmas cards to families
in New York, London, Los Angeles. And they were beautiful.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Did you ever go to other kids' houses and see
family like fridges and people sitting around?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, parents and totally different, totally different kind of things
in about half, But other parents were equally sort of superficial,
you know, and their priority, particularly in that generation, their
main focus was themselves, you know. They were not like
the kind of parent I became in most every parent
(13:47):
I know where you just encourage every little thing they do,
and you notice and you want to know where they
go and where you know, And.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, I think that. Do you have grandchildren yet? No,
that's really nice.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
I do.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And I always say is that the really great thing
about having grandchildren is the children, but also just seeing
your kids as parents And I just look at them
and I think they are. You know, I thought we
were pretty good, but they are amazing.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
One of the happiest things I was able to do
for my parents was give them a child. They loved
being grandparents.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
So maybe that skipped generate. They were better grandparents and
parents so much better.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
It was so much easier. You have less responsibility. And
my father would just spoil my daughter, Hannah Rotten, and
she goes, listen kid. My dad always had a funny,
dark sense of humor. He goes, listen kid, when I cool,
I'm going to leave you so much money, which is
a terrible thing to tell a little kid, by the way,
And my mother was my mother had ms, multiple scrosses,
(14:52):
and so she was unable to you know, she was
in bed confined and could be moved to a wheelchair.
But the look on her face when I brought my
daughter and I put her on the bed and my
daughter was, you know, an infant, but she recognized that
this lady sitting up in bed was someone important and
(15:16):
she which she'd never done with anyone. She just crawled
to her.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
And did your parents they didn't like to cook or
have a domestic life of food? Did they love food?
Did you was your mother very did? She looks so
elegant in these I just think they like to drink, right,
they like to drink.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Did they like to eat?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I don't think so. My father was you know, Irish Catholic,
and I think they ate the staple of you know whatever.
Again more the Irish cook would make they called cook
what is cook serving? And it was all like comfort food.
I know my dad loved meat loaf, you go on
in chicken pot pie. In fact, when when I was
(16:01):
married to Hannah's mom and at our wedding, Dad said,
I'm paying for the whole thing. I'm going to take
care of this. He was very you know, proud and excited,
and he told the wedding planner that he hired he
wanted chicken pot pie. And the wedding planner already had
a chicken dish prepared, and he shows the menu of
what's going to be served, and he goes, where's my
(16:22):
chicken pot pie? He went, well, it just seemed redundant
because we have chicken pie art and he went, I said,
I want a chicken fucking pot pie. That's how much
you love that?
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, that's what do you want?
Speaker 3 (16:33):
We want yeah, yeah, but you had Did you get
to boarding school?
Speaker 1 (16:36):
I did?
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, so was that a Wrencher going away?
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And it was his school very much based on on
English boarding schools, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Have no heat, bad food, and.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Bullying, terrible cruelty. There was corporal punishment.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Sorry for the British people here, but that is kind
of the ethos of yeah, I think it's better now maybe.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
But that it does not. But I mean we were
literally flogged. There was a it was called where was it?
It was in Massachusetts, a little a town called Southborough,
mass called Fay, which wasn't a lot of fun to
go back to LA and come home from Fay. You know,
there were children as young as seven years old. I
was eleven, and it was a novelty to be a
(17:18):
kid from LA to be going to school in Massachusetts,
you know, at such a young age as well. But
you know this, the food at that school was slop.
You know, We're all dressed in coats and ties for
dinner and we couldn't eat. There was a ceremony before
we could eat, of some kind of homily would be said,
and then we'd just eat and it just stuff ourselves.
(17:43):
Just everybody ate like it was like being at a trough.
And if you put your elbow on the table, the
headmaster at an enormous silver spoon. It must have weighed
about five pounds or something. And if you saw a kid,
you know, with his elbow on the table, he'd throw
the spoon, throw it, and at one time hit a
kid in the mouth and knocked his tooth out.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
The River Cafe, cafe, steps away from our restaurant, is
now open. In the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti,
chiambella and cristata from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon,
ice creamed coops and River Cafe classic desserts. Come in
the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
No need to book, see you here.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
So let's go back.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
So you left home all domestic sort of domestic life
at home and school?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Did you did you go to college?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Did you go straight into film?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So I was a bit of a discipline problem. I
was kicked out, kicked out. I was kicked out of
tenth grade, and then I became an actor both uh
and moved to New York. But in tenth grade, no,
I spent a year in Los Angeles, before going. But
and I was held back a year also because I
(19:10):
was dyslexic, poor student.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yeah, my husband's yeah, can you do you spell?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
You can't spell?
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Or I have a terrible time with math. But I
became a voracious reader once I was out of school.
Once I wasn't.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
And also probably when you were in school. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
My husband's much older than you that he was in school,
probably in the forties or whatever, and they didn't know
what dyslexia was, so he was beaten because he couldn't
memorize it. They just say, you have to learn this poem,
and if you can't, then he was.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Also I know just what he went through. I was
treated as you know, stupid, lazy, Yeah, mostly stupid and
and sort of mentally handicapped, and he had to be
I had to be held back a grade, and you know,
I get pitying looks or just be called stupid. But
you know, before then we did. I had one more
(20:05):
you mentioned Europe. One of my mothers before she became
you know, unable to walk, and she was quite healthy.
When I was thirteen, my brother was eleven and my
sister was eight, she took us to Italy, it was
her dream and she wanted to show us. We went
(20:28):
to Italy and England and France, and we took the Michelangelo,
the ocean Liner, and there began our journey. And there
I realized, oh, my mother really does love food. And
she would take us to these restaurants and go, oh
my god, this is so good, that's so good. You know,
I was, you know, a bit of a you know,
(20:49):
mischievous kid, and I would always kind of sneak out.
And when we were in Venice, I snuck out and
I when everybody was asleep, I assumed, and I met
these girls and I told him I was thirteen, yeah,
and I told him I was much older. And we
kind of walked through the streets and the canals and
(21:09):
I rescued them from some harassing Italian guys. And we're
walking through and I think I told him I'm traveling
on my own. I'm like much older. And all of
a sudden, we're in the one of the canals were in.
A boat passes by, it's a police boat and I
hear find Nay Pein and the girls go, isn't that
(21:33):
your name? I went, yeah, your day.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I thought you was ting to some Italian.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
No, no, it was my name, and my mother woke
up so he wasn't there, and she called the police
the Venetian place, and I got totally busted and I
had to get on the We all got in the
thing and there's my mother at the dock practically with
a rolling pin in her hand, and went, oh, so
you're traveling with your mother. I went, yeah. You know.
(22:00):
Another memory I have of that place is she was
dying to show us the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel
and the Michelangelo. And so we're in line. This is
in the sixties, and she's wearing a mini skirt as
most women wore, and we're in line to get the
(22:21):
tickets and one of the guys, I forget what they're called,
but the guards with the hats and the little swords
there they one of them came over and shamed my
mother about what she was wearing and talked to her.
Even though I didn't speak Italian. He talked to her
like she was some you know, prostitute or something. I mean,
my mother was mortified. So we went back to the hotel.
(22:44):
She changed and her attitude by the time we went
to the Vatican her attitude about being a Catholic and
being you know, proud of showing us this had totally changed.
We would see the displays of all the gold and
the crown and she would just say, this was all
(23:06):
stolen from poor people gave donations to buy this ridiculous extravagance,
and I think a part of her, you know, lost
her faith.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So her father and Mexican mother were Catholic. She was
raised as a Catholic, so she did have I mean
to tell she did wanting to expose her children to
Europe and choose the restaurants and give you to.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
The party going.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
I mean there was the bar that was very different
than my father. You think that was oh yeah, she
was not. You know, my father was the ringleader of
gathering of who's coming to the parties and where we're
going to go, and the emphasis on celebrity, and my
mother wasn't really like that. She went along with it,
but when they divorced, that was one of the main reasons.
(23:57):
She just didn't want to be the hostess social light,
you know anymore. And you know, when they divorced, my
father had to do some real soul searching, and he
loved my mother, and he called her his wife right
all the way through decades after the divorce, and all
of his priorities changed, you know, and he went he
(24:17):
lost all of his money, He couldn't get a job
anymore in the movie business that he loved, and he'd
burned every bridge, you know, from drinking. And he drove
up the coast in a little Ford automobile, used to
have a Mercedes that he treasured. His car broke down
in a little town in Oregon and he lived in
(24:38):
a cabin in Oregon for a year, got sober and
wrote these long, single space typed letters to his children.
And they were like workshops for him to find his voice.
And that's really the you know, the groundwork for how
he became a writer and shed all of that superficiality
(25:00):
and you know, his priorities completely changed and he really
found himself. He found his voice and what his purpose
was in great and became a great writer.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
If you liked listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
please make sure to rape and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Did you ever enjoy food? Was there ever a time
when you were eating something and you thought this is delicious.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I want to tell you the exact time I embraced food,
because now I'll tell you exactly when in nineteen eighty
I did. I was in a movie that was shooting
in Poland.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
What was it.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
It was called The Wall, based on John Hershey's book
about the Warsaw Ghetto, and I played a young ghetto fighter.
Rosanna Arquette was in this movie. Tom Conti was in
this movie who became a lifelong friend, Diane West. And
we were there during the Olympics in Moscow, and that
(26:16):
was the year that United States boycott it because of
their involvement Russia's involvement in Afghanistan nineteen eighty and so
all the food that would have been anything that mood
or bleat was sent to Moscow to feed the people
at the Olympics. So we were practically starving to death.
(26:38):
And I mean literally. Rosanna Arquette and Diane Weist I
passed them on my way to the set. When they
weren't working. They would wear babushkas without any irony involved.
They looked like peasants and be waiting in line for
a black market because we heard bananas were being sold
there and the importance of food. So each we would
(27:02):
gather enough food from the black market in order to
make a meal in one of our little tinker dressing
room cavern that had an oven and stuff, and Tom
County would make this incredible meal of all found things
that we anybody on their day off, they had to
come up with something, so we'd find bread, we'd find this,
and these were the best meals I ever had. So
(27:24):
when that's when I realized food actually tastes good, I
didn't realize it tasted good. I was twenty three, twenty
two something like that. So when we it came time
to leave the country, also went into martial law. Like
Valensa was the strikes were happening. It was a very
(27:47):
intense time to be there, and we were held for
over two months because of the conditions.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
We couldn't get out.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
We could not get out.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Was this an American production?
Speaker 1 (27:56):
It was an American production, and so we finally got out.
We're on the lot Airlines and it's changed. We're changing
planes in Frankfurt and we all have are going to
different destinations. We have to walk to wherever our destinations are,
But in the along the way to our gate, we're
all these different food places, and all of us just went,
(28:18):
oh my god, they have pezz overy. Oh my god,
there's oh we have and we all missed our flights.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
You missed it.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Every one of us missed our flights. We just ate
and ate, and ever since then, I understood food, and
I understood pasta in particular, and did so.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
When you went to New York age twenty three, and
you know, did you have your own apartment?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Did you just eat out?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
So I got my first apartment and we went to
the neighborhood places. It was on twentieth, just West twentieth Street.
It was in an area that at that time it's
the Flattering district. Now it's terribly trending. But it was
all warehouses and that made you know, a cardboard box,
and there was they were always manufacturing things. At night.
(29:04):
It was very noisy. You'd hear these machines and stuff,
and it was a desolate street. But for some reason,
I made my own clam chowder. Oh that's and I
had like a croc pot and I would make clam
chowder that would last for I have to say, I'm amazed.
As I'm telling you this, I can believe this. You're
(29:25):
bringing up all these sensory food memories. But yes, that
would be like my dish.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
That's ambitious. You were acting.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
At the time I was acting acting.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Money was money in Isshoot.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Money was always an issue.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
But you didn't work. And another you never have you
ever worked in a restaurant?
Speaker 1 (29:41):
I have. My first job was at a restaurant called
Joe Allen's, of course, you know, very famous theater place.
And I met Joe and had my interview with Joe.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
And he came to the River Cafe in the early days.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
I bet he did when he died about two three
years ago, but he was well into his nineties then too.
And so I had my meeting with Joe, and I
think I mentioned something about what I could lie without
my pulse raising. I told her I had all this
experience and uh and uh. He saw me waiting on
(30:17):
a table and somebody asked, can I have some oil
and vinegar for my dressing? And I took the bowl,
I took the salad from their plate and put the
oil and vinegar on in the kitchen, and Joe went,
You've never waited a day in your life. You bring
out the oil and victory. You don't put it on
for them that I thought, so he fired me very quickly,
(30:41):
but I stayed. I did. In fact, when I became
an actor, I would go to Joe Allen's all the
time and I had a charge account there and we
became very very friendly.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
That was.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
From my lying and faking it. I worked at a place,
mostly at a place called Beefsteak Charlie's.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Oh Yeah, where's that?
Speaker 1 (31:01):
It was a chain. I worked to the one on
the Upper West Side and it had all you could
drink sang gria and a salad bar. Salad bars were
all the new rage then, and it was pretty easy
to wait on people, but they would because there was
endless sang gria. You'd be waiting on total drunks by
the end of the night and they would try to
(31:23):
run out without tipping you, and I'd have to chase
them down the street run.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
You know, that's very Do you think you learned anything
from working in a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, I certainly learned people skills, and you know, I
kind of learned to fake it till you make it
kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
So living in New York working in the restaurant. Was
there a time then you realize you could be full
time as an actor and not have to supplant here. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
That was my ambition where I felt I'd made it
was to be able to support myself as an actor
and most importantly take cabs after two in the morning, Yeah,
instead of being in subways. And then I could take
a cab whenever I wanted. That was a bar.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Did you live a different life of going to good
restaurants and drinking good wine and drink Was that one
of your priorities or did you?
Speaker 1 (32:12):
No? No, No, I get the taxi thing.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I really do, because I remember, you know, at even
actually quite in an early age, I would skip out
other things and take a taxi.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
I still do. Yeah. And then and then.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Your your your next you know, bar is a little
higher to be able to take a woman out to
a nice restaurant and let her order whatever she wants
and not have to worry about, you know, if she's
going to order it too much. And you know, your
stakes just sort of get higher and higher as you
as you go. But then I'm fortunate enough to be
able to go to you know, my favorite restaurants and
(32:49):
eat and stay in lovely hotels. And you know, there
was a restaurant in Los Angeles that the owner just
died recently, Dsolvano, that had really great food. And I
knew Silvano, and he was a bit of a hustler.
But I ate there on a regular basis. I love
the food and I love the wine. And I always trusted,
(33:12):
you know, whenever I said, tell me what kind of
wine to get, and they were just a great staff.
I ate there quite a bit.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
When you work, when you're doing a movie, when you're
acting or you're directing, Directors very often don't like to
stop for lunch. What do you feel about food?
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And I cannot eat lunch if I'm working, whether I'm
acting or directing, I have a food hangover. I get
really tired, in lethargic. So I will either skip or graze,
you know, lunch, just to keep my energy up. I
think it's something to do with my metabolism, you know,
even after a big meal of dinners, you know, which
(33:52):
will invariably be a big meal of dinner, especially if
I skip lunch, I will just I could eat endlessly, endlessly,
the hungary er I am. The more I eat, the
better it tastes.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
But work you wise, you don't, but you have to,
don't they do? They do make you stop at lunchtime. Yes,
West was saying that he would. He really mess and
just doesn't like to stop for lunch. But he tried
giving everyone soup. And then the crew said, you know
a way, you know, we love to eat.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
I learned that lesson the hard way. I had the
first movie I re produced, I was twenty three years old.
It was called Chili Scenes of Winter. It's based on
a novel by and Beaty. It was directed by Joan
mckensilver and I had yet to really work as an actor,
but I was able to produce a movie for United
Artists a big studio and Joan Licko and Silver directed it.
(34:42):
And my two partners, all three of us were struggling actors,
but managed to get a movie made. We optioned this
book directly from the author, and we were, you know,
had kind of really no idea what we were doing.
We knew we had to save money of a certain
budget and stay within a budge, so we got the cheapest.
We're in Salt Lake City before we came to the
(35:05):
sound stages in Culver City. We got the cheapest catering
company we could find, and the food was terrible. Now
at that time, I had no relationship to food, you know,
And on the third day the crew threatened to walk
off the picture, and I realized I made a terrible mistake,
(35:28):
well three of us did, and that how important food is,
and that it shows their value, how much you value them,
and how much you value their work. And they're each
individual talents that they bring to a production by how much,
how well you feed them, how good the food is.
And you know, having been on many movies set since,
(35:50):
when a great meal is served in the catering company,
it affects the entire mood of every single person in production.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
The trajectory of food and happiness or lonely or neglect
or involvement from your family also is to do with grief.
And you know, my son died when he was twenty six,
and I remember that when we were upstairs. I just
come home and my husband we all gathered and I
turned to one of my sons and I said, put
tomato sauce on, because I need to smell food cooking.
(36:22):
I need to smell something about nurture and our home
and when everything was destroyed, and I know you had
the tragedy of your sister, and you know you say
in your book that people bought food. Do you have
any sense of what that was like? Did your mother
stop eating or did you.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Well have food? You know, at the end, there was
that time that it was very common, you know, with
people during the periods of grief. She was on life
support for five days, and then the weeks after, lovely
friends and family would always come up with a dish
(37:00):
and all different kinds, and and there was this there's
this one woman who brought a meat loaf and and
we just love this meat love, We just it was
so comforting. And everyone thought that the woman was a
friend of the other. I thought she was a friend
(37:22):
of my mother's and dad thought she was a friend
of us. And and finally, after like the fourth day
of this meat loaf, we just went, who is she?
She friend of yours? And then we realized none of
us knew who the hell she was, and she was
taking she was answering the phone. She was we still
don't know, And my mom just went, doesn't matter. She
(37:46):
makes a hell of a meat loaf. And so I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
And you never found out.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
We never really found out. I'm sure it was a
friend of someone that knew something, but she was so
kind and it was so comforting, you know. And then
you know, a year later there was a there was
a trial for she was murdered, and there was a
trial for her killer that we attended. And the custom
(38:12):
then was to eat on TV trays, watching the events
that we had just lived through on that day in
the courtroom, play out on the evening news, and we
would just my mother would be in bed with Trey
in her lap, you know, my father would be sitting
in her wheelchair with a TV tray and eating, and
(38:36):
we would just silently watch television, and then after that,
you know, put on a movie. We were raised on movies,
and then we'd end up just watching Oh, What's on.
It was a cable, early cable called the Z Channel,
and they showed movies without interruption, and oh what's on? Z?
What's on? And then we'd watch Harold and Maud or
(38:59):
you know some they would just cheer us enormously.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
I would like to talk about your book. When you're writing,
do you eat and what is your writing routine.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
My writing routine was compulsive, you know, being a first book,
I just could not stop. I couldn't keep away from
my office. And if I was on a movie set shooting,
I would run back to my dressing room between sentences,
you know, finish up where I left off, which is
why I didn't eat very much. I was actually I smoked.
(39:31):
I smoked, and I paste, and I made coffee after
coffee after coffee, and you know, I lived in a
very unhealthy you know, physically, I didn't take good care
of myself in terms of you know, eating nutritionally. I
was sort of wired. And you know I felt the
presence of my family so much when I was doing it.
It's like having company, you know. And I just saw
(39:55):
sort of the less I ate and the more coffee
I had, the memories became more and more vivid in
place and objects and time and conversation. So so that's
how we could like write as if it was a novel,
you know, of what people said and how they you know,
(40:16):
how they talked, and each voice was completely different, you know,
different My mother talked than my father and my childhood friends,
and so it was, you know, right while I wrote
about you know, very sad periods in our family's life.
There were also really hilarious things that also happened, and
(40:37):
so you know, our family was always the worst things
got the harder. We'd laugh, you know, not almost in
reaction to it, you know, And that was I think,
you know, I attribute that to my mother's sense of
humor on her on her Mexican side, and my father's
dark sense of humor on his Irish Catholic side. It
(41:01):
really saved us, you know, our humor. But eating, I
think I would, I think I would. When it was
time to finally go to bed, I'd always leave something
I wanted to look forward to. Continuing. I then go
in the fridge and I'd take out one of those
frozen burritos and I'd defrost it and I'd pour salce
(41:25):
on it, and I'd eat it and wake up a
little fatter in the morning.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Actually, Fishers said to be asking what's in his fridge?
He did actually say that to me.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
But I think that I would ask everyone listening to
this to go to wherever you buy your books and
read the Friday Afternoon Club. It is something that has
been one of the most beautiful experiences for me to
read it and to talk to you. And before we stop,
I ask everyone one question, which is fecif food is interesting,
if it's exciting, if it's something you want to explore
(41:58):
or take an adventure with. It's also comfort. And so
your book is a lot about comfort and what we need.
And I was wondering that in times of comfort, Griffin done,
what food would you go to if you need comfort?
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Well, certainly rice and beans.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Okay, let's end on that.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
That's I mean, I never get a cigarette.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Everyone, I have to say that it is. Usually the
answer is something from the childhood. Have peanut butter and
jelly sandwich you had with your mother or beans, rice
and beans.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Let's go have some. Thank you so much, thank you.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
Host
Ruth Rogers
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